Quotes About Religion

Nearly every tribe and nearly every human being has gods. Belief in gods is all over the place. It's universal. It squeaks and squoozes from every pore of humanity.

Extremist movements are driven by their inability to tolerate the basic human fact of pluralism. They refuse to accept the natural cultural and religious diversity of our world, seeking to impose their own beliefs and behaviours as a universal pattern for humanity.

I do not believe in a universal religion any more than I believe in a universal language. My feeling is that people have to make their own religion as they have to make their arts and their parishes, and that they must find their own salvation; the salvation mongers are of not much avail.

That man is a religious being, is universally conceded, for it has been seen to be universally true.

If organizations like Westboro were universally bad, they wouldn't exist. There had to be some draw, and at Westboro, there was a lot of draw. The church was almost entirely made up of my extended family, and everyone in the church felt like family.

A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory.

There is no conflict between the ideal of religion and the ideal of science, but science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine.

Secular humanists suspect there is something more gloriously human about resisting the religious impulse; about accepting the cold truth, even if that truth is only that the universe is as indifferent to us as we are to it.

I read about eastern philosophy and religion and existentialism. All that introspective thinking got me thinking about the great beyond. That turned my sights from inwards to outwards, and I started becoming interested in the makeup of the universe, and I started reading about astronomy, planets, and galaxies.

Rationally, I was convinced that the universe without God made no sense, but that simply was not the same as believing. But I also knew that I could not argue myself, or be argued, into faith.

The split between religion and science is relatively new. Isaac Newton, who first worked out the laws by which gravity held the planets and even the stars in their traces, was sufficiently impressed by the scale and regularity of the universe to ascribe it all to God.

Europeans forget that one-third of the American people have had a personal conversation with Jesus Christ and that the born-again are not just little old ladies in black but also CEOs and provosts of universities and candidates for office.

It takes a lot of courage, self-confidence, and stubbornness to be an openly committed Christian - or openly committed to any of the great religious traditions - as an undergraduate in selective colleges or in the honors programs of large universities.

Universities such as Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard all began as Jesus-inspired efforts to love God with all ones' mind.

Thankfully, I was able to go to Marquette University and get my education, a Catholic education, so I could please my family, because I think they wanted me to be a priest.

Although the Nasser revolution of 1952 was secular, the culture remained deeply religious - but it was a faith of moderation and tolerance. Women made up nearly half my class at university, and my senior academic adviser there was a woman. In Alexandria, my friends were Christians and Muslims.

Churches, by the very reason of their structures, are monolithic and do not adapt easily. But in many cases, they, too, have allowed themselves to become allied or even part of an unjust establishment or system.

I think it's a wonderful fact about Judaism - at least about the approach to Judaism I most relate to: There are no universal answers. We don't have it all figured out. God is unknowable.

The quarrels and divisions about religion were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies than in any constant belief.

I think people need something to believe in, because they don't want to have control over their own lives. They'd rather be able to blame it on an unknown being, or a greater god, or a greater spirit of sorts. And I think it's easier for them to blame it on that.

In the case of 'Disobedience,' the very secretive way of life and religion and tradition that the North London Orthodox Jewish community has was a huge invitation to explore an unknown world. And also a possible trap, and I tried to overcome that by portraying it, hopefully, with great nuance and detail and texture.

Christianity has made of death a terror which was unknown to the gay calmness of the Pagan.

We may fight terrorism through brute force, but the terror that is unleashed in the name of religion can only be challenged through moral courage.

The Roman Catholics teach that unless you're a Roman Catholic you do not go to heaven.